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Modal Decomposition Test Set—The Next of CommScope’s Top Innovations

Note: As part of its 40th anniversary observance, the CommScope team set out to identify the top 40 innovations that have come from CommScope (or one of its acquired companies) over the past 40 years. We are unveiling the innovations chosen for the Top 40 on CommScope Blogs through early January. Read more about the overall program and selection process in this November 4 post.

We continue today with our unveiling of innovations—in alphabetical order—that are ranked 11-20. You can see a list of the Top 40 innovations already revealed on our 40th anniversary page. As our 40th anniversary year draws to a close, we hope you enjoy looking back at what we think are our top innovations—ones that have helped build the world’s infrastructure of today and tomorrow.

Have an opinion about or connection to any of
the innovations? Leave a comment below.

Definition: A modal decomposition test set
measures individual cabling components such as cable, cordage and connection
(mated plug and jack) separately, then cascades them using a pre-determined
configuration mathematically. A sizable
number of simulations (more than 1,000) can be done within a short period of
time, far beyond what was practical to do with physical channels at the time.

Year of
the Innovation: 2000

What is the innovation that
CommScope or one of its acquired companies was first in creating?

In 2002, Avaya’s Connectivity Solutions business (now part
of CommScope) introduced the Modal Decomposition Modeling (MDM) platform. This powerful simulator allows CommScope to assess the link
and channel performance much more accurately than what the cabling industry had
adopted at the time. Path analysis toolkit is utilized to reduce the number of
prototype iterations by mathematically changing the property of the targeted
connecting hardware.

The test set together with the software enabled the company
to quickly and accurately assess the electrical performance of copper cabling
solutions, reduce the number of prototype iterations and provide a statistical
base for our performance claims.

What was happening in the market
that this innovation was needed?

High
performance cabling comes with stringent specifications for insertion loss,
return loss and crosstalk. It also
requires a robust noise immunity from the environment.

In fact, in most channel claims in the
industry, a certain number of physical channels are constructed and tested to
verify the performance of the system.
These numbers tend to be rather small – often 10 or fewer channels are tested
due to the time and expense of constructions.
Statistically speaking, these few channels are really insignificant and
do not provide assurance of the system capabilities. Avaya developed a tool that allows us to
fully and accurately characterize the electrical performance of our systems in
thousands of different channel configurations.

How did this innovation benefit
customers and the industry?

With the performance data of
representative cabling components stored in the database, MDM can simulate any
unique channel configuration to obtain the performance statistics before
installation. Customers can have peace
of mind knowing the performance of their installed cabling is guaranteed. MDM also sheds the light on the mode
conversion property of all cabling components which was unknown to the industry
at the time. It correlates with EMC (electro-magnetic
compatibility) performance of cabling in “noisy” environments where multiple
applications are running simultaneously.

Did this innovation act as the
springboard for other innovations and, if so, how do they all tie together?

When we
are able to see all electrical phenomena in a cabling system, we can design to
optimize the performance of any network.
Since every installation has its own unique design (every drop may have
a different length of cable with slightly different component spacing), having
the ability to model and predict performance with MDM gave Avaya a real edge in
system design.

What is the significance of the
innovation for CommScope?

MDM eliminates the need of bulk testing when it comes to
performance assessment of cabling channels and links. The innovative technology revealed the
importance of mode conversion parameters (balance) to the design of a Cat-6A
UTP cabling system. TIA and ISO/IEC did
not treat the balance terms seriously until we showed them our findings. CommScope is viewed as an industry leader
based on our in-depth understanding of transmission properties and
contributions to twisted-pair cabling.

About the Author

Richard Mei

Richard Mei is the VP of
Engineering, Global Standards and Systems at CommScope, a global leader in
infrastructure solutions for communications networks. Based in Richardson, Texas, Mr.
Mei’s group is responsible for global standard
participation as well as systems engineering for the Connectivity Solutions Division. This includes
research in the areas of twisted-pair, fiber cabling, electromagnetic compatibility
(EMC), and LAN/SAN/Cabling standards support. Mr. Mei joined Bell Labs in 1997
as a member of the Technical Staff in Middletown, NJ. He designed various
custom test systems with computer-based hardware and software that were used to
characterize the transmission property of cabling systems. His team has
the state of the arts Modal Decomposition Modeling, DMD (Differential Mode
Delay) test bench and the copper/optical communication test gear that can be
used to qualify any structured cabling solution for high-speed transmission. The latest projects in his group
involve the development of 2.5G/5GBASE-T, 25G/40GBASE-T
as well as the next generation fiber offers for 50/100/200/400 Gbps network. All of these Ethernet
applications has been or are currently being
developed in IEEE 802.3. Mr. Mei received his bachelor’s degree in Electrical
Engineering and Applied Mathematics from State University of New York at Stony
Brook in 1995. He was a research assistant at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in
Oak Ridge, Tennessee for a year. In 1997, he received his master’s in
engineering in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University.